Looking for Spinoza by Antonio Damasio Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain

In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Spinoza examined the role emotion played in human survival and culture. Yet hundreds of years and many significant scientific advances later, the neurobiological roots of joy and sorrow remain a mystery. Today, we spend countless resources doctoring our feelings with alcohol, prescription drugs, health clubs, therapy, vacation retreats, and other sorts of consumption; still, the inner workings of our minds-what feelings are, how they work, and what they mean-are largely an unexplored frontier. With scientific expertise and literary facility, bestselling author and world famous neuroscientist Antonio Damasio concludes his groundbreaking trilogy in Looking for Spinoza, exploring the cerebral processes that keep us alive and make life worth living.

Antonio Damasio is University Professor; David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Neurology and Psychology; and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California [www.usc.edu/bci]. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and the recipient of many awards, including the Asturias Prize in Science and Technology; the Honda Prize; and the Pessoa and Signoret prizes. Damasio is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He holds honorary doctorates from several universities and is the author of Descartes' Error, The Feeling of What Happens, Looking for Spinoza, and Self Comes to Mind, which have been translated and taught in universities throughout the world. (For more information go to the Brain and Creativity Institute website at http://www.usc.edu/bci/)

Unrated Critic Reviews for Looking for Spinoza

Kirkus Reviews

At this point, Damasio launches into a detailed summary of the neurological evidence that emotions and feelings, which he carefully distinguishes, arise directly from the brain's imaging of the body’s physical states.

The Guardian

At least since René Descartes, there has been a tendency to separate mind from body, to regard human and animal bodies merely as superior machines, the mind as the thing that is uniquely apart, uniquely human.

Publishers Weekly

The third in a series that began with Descartes' Error, this book deftly combines recent advances in neuroscience with charged meditations on foundational 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and the result is Damasio's fullest report so far on the nature of feelings.

London Review of Books

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